By Mary Pollock
SCRAP THE CAP UPDATE
Michigan SERA Coordinating Council asked the State of Michigan Retirement Board at its August 7 meeting to pass a resolution urging the State’s 149 lawmakers – Governor Gretchen Whitmer and all 148 members of the Michigan Legislature – to support use of the $1 billion in excess revenue in the State employee retiree health care account to help fund removal of the $300 cap on the defined benefit State retiree annual cost-of-living adjustments (COLA) and improve it for the future.
To accomplish this, both an appropriations line item and an amendment to the State Employees’ Retirement Act statute, PA 240 of 1943, would be needed. The Fiscal Year 2026 budget is still being negotiated so there is time to make this happen in the next month! The actuarial study of the potential cost of six different COLA scenarios is available to lawmakers to assist in their decision making.
SERA favors the option of using the most recent Consumer Price Index for the Elderly each year to determine the annual COLA supplement using our current pension amount each year as a base. This would be somewhat like the way the Social Security Administration determines the annual Social Security adjustment.
We estimate that over 85 percent of the current 60,000 defined benefit State retirees have hit the $300 cap. Meanwhile, there has been 176.1 percent inflation since 1987, which means that our pensions are decreasing in buying power each year.
Action Needed — SERA members need to contact the Governor, your State Representative and your State Senator at their community events, by e-mail, or phone on this issue, pointing out that State revenue is available to fund this policy change.
LEGISLATIVE NEWS
The 103rd legislative session which opened in January 2025 has been the least productive in State legislative history according to state capitol pundits. Only six bills have made it through both chambers to the Governor’s desk for signature. The Democratic controlled Michigan Senate has passed 142 bills that are waiting for Michigan House consideration; the Republican controlled Michigan House has passed 149 bills that are waiting for Michigan Senate consideration.
Budget Deadline – Meanwhile, the Legislature missed the statutory July 1 deadline for passing the Fiscal Year 2026 budget. Schools and local government budget years start July 1, so they are flying without wings, so-to-speak, and anxious to know their budget fate. The Senate passed their appropriation bills on time and sent them to the House, but the House has not completed its appropriation bills. Speaker of the House Matt Hall has removed the Democratic Vice Chair of the House Appropriations Committee without appointing a replacement yet.
Federal Impact — Federal funding is 42 percent of the State’s budget. With the federal administration’s claw back of some already approved federal funding, anticipated $1.1 billion decrease in future federal funding to Michigan by 2032 due to the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and the impending end of the special bonding revenue for State trunkline repairs, there are complicated issues to be solved. The Senate is scheduled to meet four days in August; the House, nine days. Both chambers are scheduled for 11 days in September. Look for a busy September and hope for no State government shutdown after September 30.
KNOW BEFORE YOU SIGN A PETITION
The year before a general election is the season for ballot proposals and candidates collecting voter signatures on petitions. Here’s what you might face at local festivals, fairs, parades, farmer’s markets, etc. There are eight potential ballot proposals approved or in process of approval by the Michigan Board of State Canvassers for circulation.
Con-con — Every 16 years, Michigan’s Constitution requires that voters be asked whether they want to convene a convention to draft a revision of Michigan’s 1963 Constitution. This will be Proposal 2026-1 in the non-partisan section of the 2026 ballot. If adopted, delegates to the convention would be elected to attend a 2027 convention. Any revisions adopted by the convention would be presented to the State’s voters for their approval or rejection.
Three “Citizen Voting” Petitions — Both the Constitution and State law currently only permit U.S. citizens to register to vote and cast a ballot. Every time you vote, you must sign a statement under penalty of perjury, a felony, that you are a U.S. citizen. Audits have found non-citizen voting to be very rare. In the 2024 Michigan election, of 5.7 million votes cast, 15 or 0.00028 percent scattered across Michigan were found to be potential non-citizen voters and turned over for prosecution.
Nonetheless, amid the concern about illegal immigration, the Committee to Protect Voters’ Rights (Prove It, Michigan, a Michigan-based group) and Americans for Citizen Voting Michigan (supported by the libertarian Virgina-based Liberty Initiative Fund) wants a Michigan constitutional amendment to require prospective voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship such as a birth certificate or naturalization papers to register to vote. Other parts of the proposals would undo voting reforms adopted by voters in previous ballot proposals including elimination of the affidavit option if the voter doesn’t have a government-issued photo ID for in-person voting and substituting the provisional ballot process, which would require the voter within six days of the election to go the clerk’s office with the appropriate documentation. Voters rarely follow up to cure their provisional ballots. The absentee voter would be required to provide a copy of their photo ID or a driver’s license, or give a partial social security number to vote.
The financial and time burden on election clerks and the State would be considerable if any of these became law. Additionally, it is estimated that 80 percent of married women adopted a different last name than their birth name, requiring these women to produce both their birth certificate and marriage and/or divorce paperwork to register to vote. Moreover, it is costly and administratively time-consuming for an individual to replace these kinds of documents if lost or misplaced. Critics of these “citizen voting” proposals say it will have the effect of suppressing the vote in Michigan.
Ranked Choice Voting — Rank MI Vote is collecting signatures for a constitutional amendment to allow voters to rank candidates by order of preference for select federal and State offices. Also called instant run-off elections, it allows voters to rank candidates by order of preference. Initially, only a voter’s top choice is counted, but if no candidate has a majority, the candidate with the least votes is eliminated. All the voters who chose the eliminated candidate as their first choice then have their second-place votes distributed to the remaining contestants. The process repeats until one candidate has more than 50 percent of the vote.
With computer tabulation of votes, ranked choice voting can be accomplished efficiently, but in localities using it, the results come in somewhat later. Hand tallies would be rather complicated and prone to error. Straight party voting would end. Advocates say it would lead to election of candidates with broader appeal and encourage less adversarial campaigns.
Tax the Rich for Education Funding — Invest in MI Kids wants to amend the Michigan Constitution to add an additional 5 percentage point income tax to the current 4.25 percent income tax on individuals with incomes above $500,000 ($1 million for joint filers). The additional revenue generated from the 60,000 affected taxpayers would go into the State School Aid Fund for local school district programs.
Minimum Wage Redux — Voters to Stop Pay Cuts/One Fair Wage is sponsoring this referendum to repeal the February 2025 Michigan law which reduced the minimum wage for Michigan tipped workers and established a new schedule for increasing the State minimum wage. It also changed the way future inflation adjustments for minimum wage increases will occur.
This story started in 2018 when One Fair Wage gathered sufficient signatures to go on the ballot. Michigan SERA supported the ballot proposal at that time. To stop that process, the Legislature adopted the law and then, in the same legislative session, gutted it. Eventually Michigan courts determined that the “adopt and amend” strategy to gut the law was unconstitutional and reinstated the original 2018 One Fair Wage law with an implementation date of February 21, 2025. On February 20, 2025, a bi-partisan majority of the Michigan Legislature ratcheted back the law and the Governor signed it.
Highly tipped workers fear that adopting the minimum wage for them would discourage tipping and affect their income. Restaurant owners fear problems with recruiting and retaining servers. The history of the exclusion from minimum wage requirements of tipped service workers, domestic workers, agriculture workers, and others goes back to southern Democrats opposing the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (minimum wage and other worker protections) unless these categories of workers were excluded from its protections.
Eliminate Property Taxes — Ax Mi Tax wants a constitutional amendment to prohibit real and personal property taxes in Michigan, the primary source of revenue for local government, schools, community colleges, parks, public transit, local roads and infrastructure, and more. The measure would replace this revenue with current sales and other taxes to these entities. The proposal would also require 60 percent voter approval to raise local taxes and require two/thirds vote of the Legislature for tax increases greater than 0.1 percent over five years.
Campaign Finance Reform — Michiganders for Money Out of Politics is a coalition of organizations seeking to enact an initiated statute to restrict contributions, directly and indirectly, from State regulated electric or gas utilities to certain elected officials or candidates for those offices and to restrict contributions from State contractors with aggregated contracts of $250,000 or more.
The price of running campaigns has increased exponentially since the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission Supreme Court ruling in 2010 that gave corporations and unions First Amendment rights to support or oppose political candidates. As a result, some feel candidates and officeholders respond to their big donors’ interests rather than voter concerns.
Summary — All of these ballot campaigns have websites and social media presence where you can find additional information about the proposal. While some of the details can be complex, a good place to find more information is https://ballotpedia.org and other Michigan news organizations like www.bridgemi.com. In some cases, there are Decline to Sign campaigns happening now. Once a measure makes the ballot, organized opposition sometimes emerges with additional public information available. Ask petition circulators to explain the proposal and read the 100-word summary at the top of the petition to make sure you are signing something you support.
(Editor’s Note: Mary Pollock is the Lansing SERA Chapter and SERA Coordinating Council’s Legislative Representative. She may be contacted at michigansera@comcast.net.)